Here are the hot stories in the Bay Area for
Tuesday, November 16, 2010:

Martinez taps veteran to lead police department

Cmdr. Gary Peterson, a 21-year veteran of the Martinez police
department, will replace Chief Tom Simonetti, who retired in June.

Peterson, 47, joined the department in 1989, two years after
graduating from UC Riverside with a bachelor’s degree in sociology.
During his career in Martinez, Peterson has held several positions,
including undercover narcotics agent, detective sergeant and SWAT team
leader. He was promoted to commander in January 2008.

He has a master’s degree in criminal justice from Sacramento State
and a law degree from John F. Kennedy University.

Peterson said he brings experience, energy and institutional
knowledge to the chief’s job, which he takes over next month. His
position will remain vacant.

A jury on Tuesday acquitted a Live Oak man charged with brawling
with members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club on Front Street.

The jury deliberated for roughly five hours on Monday afternoon and
Tuesday morning, weighing a charge against Thomas Froberg for fighting
in public and a related allegation of participating in a criminal
street gang.

Tears came to Froberg’s eyes after the jury read their verdict of
not guilty. Froberg has no other felony convictions, and he would have
faced one to three years in state prison had he been convicted.
He was not held in custody during the trial.

“I think that the jury came to the correct decision,” said public
defender Mark Briscoe, who represented Froberg in the case.

“This was a case where there was whole lot of conflicting
information, and I think the jury took seriously the concept that we
don’t convict people in this country who are not beyond a reasonable
doubt,” Briscoe said.

The three-alarm blaze that caused $1.1 million in damage to a
warehouse filled with rock legend Neil Young’s music equipment and
memorabilia appears to have started in a one-of-a-kind hybrid car
stored at the site, a fire official said Monday.

Flames began in a 1959 Lincoln Continental dubbed LincVolt, which
runs on electric batteries and a biodiesel-powered generator, and then
spread to the warehouse at 593 Quarry Road in the early morning of
Nov. 9, according to Belmont-San Carlos Fire Marshal Jim Palisi and a
website devoted to the car.

Young assembled a team of workers in 2008 to convert the 19.5-foot
behemoth from gasoline to hybrid power, an effort he chronicled in a
four-part film series.

While the exact cause of the fire is still being probed, it seems
“to be an operator error that occurred in an untested part of the
charging system,” Young wrote in a statement. Workers have removed the
car’s computer and hope it will shed light on the cause.

The perk that has allowed city workers on official business to park
for free at meters was wiped off the books this afternoon by the San
Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency governing board, the S.F.
Chronicle said.

Now, they have to plug meters like all other drivers, or, as an
alternative, the departments they work for could purchase new annual
parking permits at $924 apiece.

Now even city workers have to keep an eye out for the parking cops.

There are now approximately 2,500 vehicles in the city fleet that
will be affected.

The policy change is expected to generate an estimated $2.3 million
annually for the agency to help fund Muni service. The projected take
for the remainder of the current fiscal year that ends June 30, 2011,
is $1 million.

The crab season was scheduled to open Monday but appeared in limbo
amid reports some crabs were immature and not ready for harvest.

But testing of Dungeness crab indicated they were ready, prompting
scores of commercial fishermen to drop thousands of crab pots off the
Northern California coast Tuesday as the season opened after a one-day
delay.

Check in weekday afternoons for the P.M. Bay
Area Buzz, a summary of news from Bay Area News Group staff writers,
The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact
George Kelly at 925-323-8318. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/allaboutgeorge.

George Kelly is a breaking news reporter for the Bay Area News Group. He has worked as an online coordinator and, before that, a copy editor and page designer for Bay Area-based newspapers and magazines. Off work, he enjoys playing in bands, busking and karaoke. His first newspaper job was as a Washington Post paperboy.

"There is a general recognition that we don't need these military-style weapons in New Zealand, so it's very easy to win cross-party support for this," said Mark Mitchell, who was defense minister in the previous, center-right government and who supports the ban initiated by the center-left-led Labour Party.